Rural Vision Season 2 Episode 04│Urban People Who Enter the Countryside in Pursuit of Their Ideals, The Aesthetics of Organic Living in the San Francisco Bay Area

Text / Baohua Communications Planning, Song Ruozhen

When a society becomes affluent to a certain degree, what do people seek in the food they eat beyond merely filling their stomachs? For the final stop of the overseas cases in the "Rural Vision" documentary series, we came to the San Francisco Bay Area to see how this wealthiest region in the United States views its relationship with food.

The San Francisco Bay Area, or the Bay Area for short, is located in northern California in the United States and refers to the metropolitan and rural areas centered on San Francisco Bay. The famous Silicon Valley is here, and the Google headquarters and Facebook headquarters are here too. Many tech talents and creative minds gather here, driving global technological trends, and at the same time, this is also the birthplace of the organic food movement in the United States.

The Chef Who Created the "Farm to Table" Trend ⟧9⟧During our half month in the Bay Area, whenever the topic of the Bay Area's organic food movement came up, we often heard one name from interviewees: "Alice Waters." Alice Waters is called the "godmother of California cuisine." As early as the 1970s, she opened Chez Panisse, a restaurant that insisted on using only local agricultural produce and emphasized the original flavors of food, spreading the concept of organic and healthy cooking across the United States and laying the foundation for the characteristics of California cuisine.

During our half month in the Bay Area, whenever the topic of the Bay Area's organic food movement came up, we often heard one name from the people we interviewed: "Alice Waters." Alice Waters is known as the "godmother of California cuisine." As early as the 1970s, she opened a restaurant called Chez Panisse that insisted on using only local farm produce and emphasized the original flavors of food, spreading the concept of organic and healthy cooking throughout the United States and establishing the character of California cuisine.

Although the filming period coincided with Ms. Waters' book promotion period and we did not have the chance to meet her, when we visited the California campus of the Culinary Institute of America, we saw that the philosophy of emphasizing local ingredients had already deepened into the training process of this cradle of California chefs: in addition to learning the characteristics of major cuisines, students also had to spend 6 hours a week in the school farm planting, weeding, and harvesting crops and then using them to cook; on weekends they also needed to go to the local farmers market to sell the surplus produce from the school farm.

In the Bay Area, locally fresh ingredients that are simply cooked and retain their original flavors are fine food; "farm to table" is not just an initiative, but a widely practiced concept.

Urban People Who Enter the Countryside in Search of Utopia

"You are what you eat." Every bite of food defines what kind of person we are; the organic food movement influences not only the food people eat, but also casts a big question in this place where top talent gathers: "What kind of life do I truly want to live?"

Many people began to leave the city and reflect on the meaning of life, creating many stories of "giving up a million-yuan annual salary to return home and farm" and "highly educated farming families." Some of these people who migrated in reverse from the city back to the countryside were tired of the city and wanted to live more freely and spend more time with their families, while others felt the power of the land and saw in the countryside the possibility of putting their ideals into practice.

The owner couple of Belden Barns changed career paths in order to have more time to spend with their children and found a blue ocean for entrepreneurship in the countryside. The Beldens, who used to fly everywhere on business trips, brought their children and dog, slowed down, and run Belden Barns deep in the Sonoma Valley. With the help of experts, they grow grapes and make wine, and they invited the Harvard-educated Trotter couple to open another farm on the property, growing vegetables and fruits in a sustainable way.

After these two couples began farming, it was not that they cut off their connection with the city from then on; in fact, it was precisely because of their urban backgrounds,